Gambling Terms – Unique Gambling Phrases & Terms
In our article, you will find popular gambling terms and phrases, which deviate from the standard phrases and definitions you can read in the “learn how to play” manuals. We collected strange and funny gambling terms and slang used when playing the popular casino and card games.
When speaking about unconventional gambling terms, slang is essential. That is why many of the examples in this article may not sound related to gambling at all, and you may be wondering how come they got attached to a game. We will give plenty of examples and even add information on how the phrases came to be. Check the table below to see the main sections in our article, and don’t skip the answers to the interesting questions we have in our Q&A section.
Gambling Terms and Phrases the Tutorials Can’t Teach You
We will begin our presentation of the gaming and gambling terms by saying that everything in this article can be heard around the gaming tables but not found in the game tutorials. There will be no definition of gambling here or any of the standard terms like bet, call, spin, and so on. Instead, we will present some of the unconventional terms in gambling.
Good examples of what you can find in this article are “carpet joint” and “sawdust joint”. Players in the USA use both slangs, but “carpet joint” refers to luxury and high-end casinos because, in the past, the casinos were amongst the few public buildings which could afford to have carpets. On the other hand, the “sawdust joint” refers to unpretentious and low-quality casino halls.
Classic Terms & Slang in Gambling
It is hard to believe that there might be gambling slang terms, which could be called classic, but there are. In the table below, we listed some casino terms, which became popular in the gambling rooms. You can’t use those phrases while playing at the best online casinos in the UK, but they are standard phrases for situations or actions in the land-based locations. Here they are:
| Slang | Description |
|---|---|
| ❌ 86’d (Eighty-Sixed) | A player who the casino banned for cheating or foul play |
| 😤 Beef | A dispute between gambler (player) and the casino/bookmaker |
| 💈 Barber Pole | A stack of chips with different colours and/or denomination |
| 🧼 Card Washing | Card shuffling performed by a skilful dealer before dealing |
| 👁️ Eye in the Sky | It is popular slang for all security cameras and devices inside casinos |
Using the general term or the slang shows how deep into the gambling world a player is and even which country they come from. Many countries have different slang and nicknames for the same thing, which are derivative of the local players’ lives.
A good example is the house edge, or the bookies (bookmakers) fee for accepting gamblers’ wager. The house edge is also known as juice, under-juice, vigorish, the vig, the cut, the margin, or the take. If you are curious about bookies’ place in gambling, check movies like Bookies (2003), Two for the Money, Lay the Favorite, and more.
Gambling Terms for Cash & Bets
You may not know that, but most gamblers are very superstitious. Most of them always carry good luck charms when gambling. Some are so afraid of bad luck that they even use gambling terms for luck like Lady Luck, Dame Fortune, and even just the Lady. Something all players agree on is that the best time is the “honeymoon” or “beginner’s luck” period when the first-time gamblers win.
Once the honeymoon period is over, beginner’s luck can be transformed with knowledge. This is the time when players learn the basic gaming terms and strategies. This is the time when basic gaming knowledge of bets is gained, and many players adopt slang for cash and bets like the ones below:
- White meat is a slang for profit or winning.
- Sawbuck: slang for making a $10 wager.
- Half-a-dollar is a bet of $50.
- Buck means a $100 bet.
- Nickel means a bet of $500.
Those gambling slang terms became popular in the past at large gambling destinations like the casinos in Reno or Las Vegas, Nevada. They are also the birthplace of the phrase “scared money”. Such a bankroll comes after the player makes many nickel and buck stakes. In the scared money bets, a player places a stake limit he can’t afford to lose. Usually, this type of cash is borrowed or loaned and is too big to be returned.
Gambling Terms & Slang for Players
In the Cambridge English dictionary, the gambler definition is “a person who risks losing money in the hope of winning a lot more money”. Knowing this, there is no wonder why casinos create different comps and events to gather players.
In the gambling terms and phrases, we can find “junket”, which refers to a group of high rollers brought in by the casino for events or tournaments.
The top casino resorts worldwide have various incentives, comps, and special treatment for every player. There are different levels of gamblers, depending on their game skills and cash, and they all have a slang name used by other players and casino employees. Here are several examples:
| Player Types | Description |
|---|---|
| 💸 Down to the Felt | Any player who runs out of money |
| 🎣 Fish | A low-skilled player who tends to play loose and loses everything |
| 🧽 Flea/Sponger | Players who aim to get maximum comps for small bets |
| 🧐 George | Dealer’s favourite gambler who gives big tips |
| 🤯 Longshot | The unlikely winner in a game or competition |
| 😎 Mechanic | A casino cheater using sleight of hand to win at dice or card games |
| 🕊️ Pigeon | A newbie gambler or player whose game lacks sophistication and finesse |
| 🤓 Ploppy | New gambler bad at the game but advises more advanced players |
| 🏆 Pro/Professional | Professional gamblers are players who make money only from gambling and betting |
| 🐕 Puppy/Underdog | Player or gambler who is most likely to lose |
| 🦉 Railbird | They observe gamblers with the idea to steal their chips or make an easy win after learning the player’s tells and bluffs |
| 🐁 Rathole | A gambler who stacks or hides his chips, so it is not clear how much he had won |
| 🗡️ Scalper | A player intending to profit from odd’s differences in different books by placing bets for all competitors in a game |
| 🤡 Scamdicapper | This gambler always brags and exaggerates their skills set and winnings |
| 🦈 Shark or Sharp | Highly-skilled gamblers who hide their abilities at the beginning of the game. Often pretending to be a fish and lose until they learn opponents’ tells and bluffs |
| 🐳 Whale | A high roller who spends large crazy amounts of money |
As you can see in the table, there are gambling terms for beginner, high roller, and every other player type you can meet. Undoubtedly, the pro-gamblers draw attention, but there is another type of high-stakes players who are way more interesting to the spectators. The so-called gambling whales like Andrew Beal are players with exceptionally deep pockets who astonished everyone by losing big and not breaking a sweat about it.
Gambling Slang Terms in Card Games
We can find astonishing stories while browsing through the gambling facts and history. One of the most interesting examples is the MIT blackjack team, that managed to win millions from casinos. Their card counting skills are undoubtedly incredible, but we can’t help but wonder what slang and signs they used to stay unnoticed.
On the other hand, poker players are quite open people and ready to share their wisdom and skills. Today, some of the most popular gambling terms slang comes from the time of the Old Wild West. We can easily imagine gamblers like Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, Pat Garret and their pals use the phrases below in the dim saloon rooms while waiting for a good hand or keeping an eye on players ready to end the game with a gunfight.
All those funny gambling terms had been heard for years in the brick and mortar and riverboat casinos in the USA. Since gamblers and players travel frequently, more interesting phrases and gambling slang are created daily. Next time you play with your friends, you may try to use some of them to see if they can improve your game before you hit a casino.
Unique Terms in Other Gambling Games
The true fans of horse races know every slang used at the track and get frustrated with every dead heat (situation when two or more horses tie on the finish). The rest of us can learn horse racing gambling terms from incredible horse races movies like Secretariat, Hidalgo, and many more.
Another example of a popular game with many different gambling terms and phrases is roulette. This is because there are many roulette variations and strategies in French and English. The terms from one language jump through casinos and sometimes even announce the biggest roulette wins of all time. One of the interesting differences between French and American Roulette is the dolly:
Craps, Sic Bo, Chuck-a-Luck (a variant of Sic Bo also known as Birdcage and Grand Hazard), and other dice games have been popular for centuries, and every dice roll or number has a special name. Lately, more players pay attention to them at the best online casinos in the USA for 2024 and visit the tables at local gaming rooms. This is where players can hear some of the standard phrases:
- 🦴 Bones is the classic term for dice because the die is white like a bone, and in the past, some dice were actually made of animal bones.
- ⛔ Don’t come/Don’t pass line is betting for the shooter to lose. The phrases are a sort of jinx over the dice.
- 🔥 Fire is called every very large wager. The logic is simple because if the player loses his money, “burn”.
- 💛 Golden Arm is a title for every craps player who rolls dice for over one hour without losing.
- 🐍 Snake Eyes is another term from Craps when both dice land on one. The red dots look like snake’s eyes, and, just like an encounter with a venomous snake, it means bad news.
We can’t skip sports betting, but the sports gambling terms and phrases are so many that they deserve their own article. One of the strangest examples we found is the phrase “grand salami”, which surprisingly has nothing to do with food. This is a gambling terms slang that describes a combined score of goals in all the hockey games scheduled for the day.
Gambling Terms Interesting Questions
In our article dedicated to the gambling terms, we turned your attention to the strange and funny phrases and slang words used in the games. Now, we will answer some of the most interesting and popular questions about the gaming terminology.
